KHYBER: The representatives of local government system in Landi Kotal have expressed their reservations over the slow pace of survey of rain-affected public properties and accused district administration of its inability to tackle the issue.

Addressing a news conference at Landi Kotal Press Club, tehsil chairman Shah Khalid and a number of councillors regretted that the teams constituted for the collection of data of rain-affected damaged structures had not yet initiated the exercise owing to the complicated nature of survey procedure.

Objecting to the procedure devised for collection of data of damaged structures, Shah Khalid said that the teams constituted for the purpose were yet to upload data on a designated website through a mobile phone App as the deadline had passed.

Demanding an extension in the deadline for uploading of data, he also called upon the district administration to improve its efficiency and expedite the process of data collection. “We fear that the survey teams would not cover the entire Landi Kotal tehsil at its current pace with majority of genuine families left out of the survey of their damaged houses and other properties,” he added.

Mr Khalid also accused members of the survey teams of demanding money from locals for their travel expenses. He added that officials of district administration had confined themselves to their offices instead of conducting frequent tours of the affected localities.

He said that chairman of every village council (VC), out of the total 36, had complete data of the respective area and their involvement in the survey of damaged structures could have helped in collecting genuine information about the affected families. He said that village council chairmen had firsthand information about their respective localities.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2024